The present disclosure generally relates to motion capture, and specifically, to marker based, real-time tracking.
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated environment created by computer technology and presented to a user through a VR system. In some VR systems, a user may interact with the virtual world around him using his hands and fingers (e.g., gestures). In these situations, the virtual VR system detects the user's hands and tracks them through time such that movement of the user's hands and figures are mapped to the user's movements in a virtual environment. However, conventional motion capture systems are unable to efficiently and automatically map in real-time the movement of markers associated with a user's limbs, to the movements of models or avatars in a VR or AR environment.
Moreover, in conventional marker based capture for film/television production, assignment and re-assignment of markers is a tedious process. For these systems an actor wears a suit that has various markers located on it. But, automatic assignment of markers generally can only occur if the actor is in a specific pose (e.g., stand up straight with arms out to form a T). Accordingly, if during filming the system loses track of a marker (which happens often), it is not able to automatically re-assign the marker unless filming is stopped and the actor assumes the specific pose. As it is not efficient to stop filming every time assignment of a marker is lost, the re-assignment of markers is usually done during post production by people who manually re-assign markers that were lost during the filming.